Week Log: Show Me The Anger

For nearly seven years, BSMW has been your reliable one-stop for Hub sports happenings. We’ve been your blog for newslinks, and now we’ll be your blog for bloglinks. Boston has an unbridled passion for sports that overflows our Main Street media and spills into the off-Broadway network of blogs. Along with point-of-play reporting – for which I’ve yet to find any practical use – and the hottest rumors, there’s plenty of provocative thought and analysis down these sidestreets, so let’s give them a walking.

Celtics

First off, after back-to-back drummings on Wednesday and Thursday, I was fed up and went shopping for a little anger from C’s fans. I mean, two weeks ago tonight they carried a 27-2 record and an 81-79 lead into the last 3:57 in LA, and then they stopped playing. Inside Hoops stokes it up with a nice chronicle of the fall (pre-Rockets). HoopsVibe says the Lakers stole the C’s hearts that day, and they further attribute the Posey loss to our current woes. Perk Is A Beast blames the schedulemakers, and that was before they lost the second of back-to-back games last night. Red’s Army says Rondo’s game has been destroyed. In The Paint is nagged by the lack of defensive intensity the C’s are demonstrating each night. CelticsBlog offers a full inventory of excuses to which readers can add their own. OT looks at the scrutiny surrounding the oft-maligned bench.

Okay. Not so bad. This may prove we’re maturing a bit as fans. Over on Full Court Press, our own Bruce Allen looks to Stephon Marbury as a remedy.

Red Sox / Baseball

If winter’s here, can spring be far behind? Fictional Mike and Susan on The Soxaholix comic strip say no (I told you this was off-Broadway), but Clearing the Bases thinks so, with Yawkey Way taking its sweet time getting the roster in shape for spring. The Bradford Files delights in the sweet time the market is taking with respect to signing Manny. YFSF, a/k/a YankeeFan vs. SoxFan, likes the newest Sox pick-ups in Baldelli and Smoltz. Mazz thinks their additions prove there’s more ways than one to skin a cat.

Red Sox Monster has Jim Rice a few days and a few votes short of getting into the HOF. One If By Land figures the landscape to be even tougher for future nominees. Better Red Than Dead starts the year off by following Doug Mirabelli’s wanderings in and out of Boston. Surviving Grady muses over the A’s re-signing Giambino and, in some other posts during the week, try to restore tranquility in the wake of A.L. East competition getting stronger with the Teixeira and Pat Burrell signings. Over The Monster continues its look at the top ten events of ’08 with #2.

Down in the Evil Empire, Subway Squawker Lisa spent most of the week drooling over the Teixeira signing, while partner Jon enjoys a good laugh over the whole press conference (BTW, check out some excerpts over on Red Sox Game Day.) Big League Stew explains that Teixeira did what any one of us would do in choosing the Bronx: he followed his wife’s orders. Boston Dirt Dogs knows why the lovely Fifth Avenue Leigh dissed the Hub, while The Joy of Sox says it was not his wife but his Sister that sealed it. Toeing the Rubber thinks he’s where his wife wants him to be, but figure on that changing once hubby – or even she – starts hearing it from the Bronx Boobirds.

Football

You think there’s rage on The Heights? Well, not from A.D. Gene DeFilippo. The Globe’s College Sports Blog says he just had a bad day.

For some odd reason, Bob Ryan’s And Another Thing vents anger toward Alabama for giving the good folks in Utah a reason to live.

Adam Schefter’s latest gossip is that Scott Pioli will be staying put. The End Zone carries a story that suggests Pioli never negotiated with the Browns in the first place. Projo Pats Blog runs down Pioli’s options and some other coaching moves. Reiss’s Pieces always has some interesting . . . well, pieces, including this on the Pats’ most penalized players.

Bruins

Cooler heads have prevailed on the ice so far, but a little frustration is beginning to fester on Pucks With Haggs after the B’s were trapped to death in back-to-back losses this week. Wicked Bruins Fan is looking to break a jersey jinx and sounding like he’s about a week behind most Celtics fans as the winter approaches a never-ending feel. On a positive note, Rink Rap has all well in the nets where two goalies are better than one. And Stanley Cup of Chowder reports on three Bruins all-stars some of us haven’t even heard of.

Enjoy the BCS National Championship game tonight, and be sure to join us again next Thursday as we bring you the best of the blogging world with our Week Log. If you keep clicking, we’ll keep klogging.

Published by Bruce Allen

18 thoughts on “Week Log: Show Me The Anger”

Jim Rice is no Hall of Famer. Not even close. If he were, he’d have been voted in by now. And don’t let the (Red Sox PR lackey) Dick Breschiani-fed hacks in the Boston baseball media convince you otherwise.

Bad teammate, bad fielder, grossly overrated hitter with a consistent tendency to disappear late in games and pull outside pitches into 6-4-3, rally-killing double plays.

Notice how there isn’t a go-to highlight of this guy’s career moment. Why? Because he didn’t have one!

Don Baylor played here for a season and a half and he had the series-saving, 1986 homer vs the Angels. Dave Henderson played a similarly short stint and had two epic 1986 homers vs the Angels and Mets.

Fisk had the homerun in Game 6. Lynn had the diving catch in Shea Stadium in 1975 and the early homerun in Game 6. Yaz had the huge homerun vs Guidry in 1978 and the run-scoring single in the last game vs Minnesota in ’67. Evans had the great catch in Game 6.

Bill Mueller had more highlight moments in a Red Sox uniform than Jim Rice, and contributed more to the franchise in his three seasons than Rice did in sixteen.

What did Rice really accomplish except to compile a bunch of largely-meaningless stats that only a front office holdover from the Red Sox of old could consider meaningful?

Hey assclown, try being the most feared hitter from the mid to late 70s to the mid 80s. Check out these facts:
8 time all star
1978 mvp (6 times top 5)
2 time silver slugger (only started in 1980)
only mlb player to lead league in triples, homers & rbis in a season
406 total bases, most in al in over 40 years
led al in homers three times, rbis twice, slugging twice, total bases four times
only mlb player to have 200 hits and 39 hrs 3 seasons in a row
from 1975 to 1986, led mlb players in games played, ab, runs, hits, hrs, rbis, slugging, total bases, extra base hits, go ahead rbis, multiple hit games and outfield assists
Take those stats and shove them up your ass you felching freak!

While I agree that Jim Rice does not belong in the Hall (and using All-Star appearances as an argument is kind of useless), this reasoning is pretty goofy. Last I checked Hall Of Fame voting was not done based on career moment highlights or some guy’s memory of rally killing double plays. If you want to cite his relatively short peak and immediate drop off as well as not having the overall numbers, I’d be right with you.

Still trying to see how being the best hitter from 1975 to 1986 doesn’t merit Jim Rice for the HOF. If postseason heroics is required for induction, then they’d better start kicking people out. That’s the dumbest statement I’ve ever read concerning someone’s place in the HOF.

Regarding Rice….I don’t think he’s a Hall of Famer. Had his career not plunged off the cliff at age 33 after the ’86 season, and he’d played long enough to make it to about 450 homers, then I think he would get in (but he didn’t even make it to 400, let alone 450).

However, I think he takes a bad rap for not being a “big game” performer.

In 1975, he broke his wrist in September and missed the entire post-season…can’t blame him for that.

In 1978, he carried the offense on his back when guys like Fisk, Yaz, Evans, et al, began to tire and breakdown late in the season…and he also drove in the 2nd run of the playoff game in the 6th inning against Guidry to make it 2-0 Sox (one half-inning before Bucky Dent went deep).

In 1986, he hit a big 3-run homer off John Candelaria to bust Game 7 of the ALCS wide open. In the World Series that year, it wasn’t Rice’s fault that he failed to drive in a run, because the idiot manager, McNamara, kept batting an ice cold Bill Buckner in front of Rice during the entire Series, and Buckner kept ending inning after inning after inning with runners on base, forcing Rice, as Dan Shaughnessy wrote in his book about the ’86 season, “to test his leadoff skills over the full 7 game series.”

I always liked Rice, a lot. He never complained, he played hurt, and he played every day.

Bad teammate? We’ll never really know the whole story about those 70s Red Sox…they were a dysfunctional lot as far as I’ve heard.

I believe the thrust of my initial comment was that I didn’t think he belonged in the HOF. I was merely trying to make the argument that his reputation as a “non-clutch” hitter is a bit misleading.

I pulled out the Shaughnessy line from his 22-year old book chronicling the Red Sox of 1986 (“One Strike Away” was the title) to illustrate that Rice never really had much of a chance to drive in runs during the ’86 Series, because Buckner was killing more rallies than a gallon of tear gas batting in the #3 spot in front of Rice.

That said….I don’t think Rice is a hall-of-famer based on the pure, or orginal definition of a hall-of-famer, even though I think he does belong in there just as much as a guy like Tony Perez, who labored much longer in the majors to put up the same kinds of numbers that Rice did in a shorter period of time. Perez is in the HOF I believe.

Sorry, when I saw the “recycled Shank” line I thought you were replying to me.

Either way…I don’t think Rice is a HOF’er, but I do think his “non-clutch” reputation is undeserved (I’d certainly take my chances with Jim Ed at the plate in a big post-season situation than with Mo Vaughn, that’s for sure)

Bob Ryan is evidently suffering from a bad case of hemorrhoids or something. The guy can no longer write coherently and we’ll shortly be reading how he’s tried to physically assault his editor or someone crossing his path. He’s really going off the deep end.